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Abstract:<\/strong><\/p>\n This article argues that historically production dramaturgy and mise en sc\u00e8ne developed hand in hand and are therefore inseparable. By investigating the staging of three classics,Fatherlessness \/ Platonov<\/em> at the \u00d6rk\u00e9ny Theatre, Budapest, a devised adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz <\/em>at the Schaub\u00fchne, Berlin and The Changeling <\/em>at the Young Vic Theatre in London, it shows what role production dramaturgy can play in developing the contemporary mise en sc\u00e8ne.<\/p>\n Although the role of the dramaturg was established by G.E. Lessing in the eighteenth century, this dramaturgy (and the role of the dramaturg for some time) was concerned with \u2018new drama development\u2019 and \u2018curating\u2019 (to use contemporary terms). The role of the production dramaturg<\/i> (a practitioner who works with the director in order to develop the mise en sc\u00e8ne) was a later development. It was brought about alongside with<\/i> the evolvement of the role of the modern director, which, (although there are some antecedents, for instance, Goethe\u2019s work at Weimar Theatre (1791\u20131817) is widely considered to appear at the end of the nineteenth century. From their birth, therefore, production dramaturgy and mise en sc\u00e8ne are two inseparable entities.[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The role of the production dramaturg<\/i> developed hand in hand with that of the modern director at the end of the nineteenth century: a collaborative, synergic, sometimes interchangeable role, with a hermeneutical function of understanding the meaning of the play and helping to unfold this during the rehearsal process, in order to create a coherent and artful mise en sc\u00e8ne. We can observe this role developing in the work of Meininger Hoftheater from 1866 to 1890 in the collaboration between George II, the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, the director of the company with his wife, actor and dramaturg Baroness Helene Freifrau von Heldburg, and director and stage manager Ludwig Chronegk; or in the work of the Moscow Art Theatre under the leadership of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and Konstantin Stanislavsky.<\/p>\n Brecht is considered to have developed the role still further. His legacy was to bring the current audience into this equation and to relate the play in question to the time of the production, emphasising (or sometimes even \u2018exploiting\u2019) its message in the here and now. In other words he argued for not a historically or psychologically accurate mise en sc\u00e8ne but instead a socially and politically sensitive staging. The consequences of this for dramaturgy were considerable: in order to use \u2018old material to make a new play,\u2019[2]<\/sup><\/a> the dramaturg had to understand and moreover to practise production dramaturgy as a process of adaptation<\/i>.<\/p>\n By the end of the twentieth century, theatre seemed to have loosened its function as the immediate agent of political change and enlightenment. At the same time, however, another influence was beginning to emerge: the changes in theatre making that started around the 1960s and 70s (performance art, non-text based theatre, dance theatre etc.). This \u2018new dramaturgy\u2019 (a term coined by Marianne Van Kerkhoven) referred to a process-oriented method of working, where:<\/p>\n \u2026the meaning, the intentions, the form and the substance of a play arise during the working process [\u2026]. In this case dramaturgy is no longer a means of bringing out the structure of the meaning of the world in a play, but (a quest for) a provisional or possible arrangement which the artist imposes on those elements he gathers from a reality that appears to him chaotic.<\/strong>[3]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n As a response to this expanding theatrical universe, production dramaturgical practices have incorporated the new dramaturgical experience of collaborative creation processes, whereby the \u2018mise en sc\u00e8ne\u2019 is developed during the work together with the performer-creators, and sometimes even gains its meaning only during its interaction with the audience. As these practices are diverse, consequently, production dramaturgy today (which is developed in response to the given creative process) can take many forms.<\/p>\n Perhaps as a result of the explosion of the theatrical (i.e. dramaturgical) canon \u2013 that is to say there is no descriptive dramaturgy (or \u2018performance poetics\u2019) that could be applied to every piece of theatre, dance or performance today \u2013 contemporary theatre has become very dramaturgical, or dramaturgically conscious<\/i>. This is evident, as often the given production process needs to develop its (own) dramaturgy that is unique to the production.<\/p>\n In the three examples below I will show the diversity of contemporary production dramaturgy in text-based theatre, and how it responds to the mise en sc\u00e8ne \u2013 and has in fact developed together with it. What these three productions have in common is that the starting point is a classic (novel or play), which, during the creative process, undergoes a strong transformation, some sort of interpretational-adaptation process. The piece\u2019s dramaturgy is developed during this work in a synergic way with the mise en sc\u00e8ne that often finds its final shape in the rehearsal room.<\/p>\n Fatherlessness (Platonov) <\/i>\u2013 \u00d6rk\u00e9ny Theatre, Budapest<\/strong>[4]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Guest director Yuri Kordonsky\u2019s production of Fatherlessness <\/i>at the \u00d6rk\u00e9ny Theatre (a public repertory theatre) in Budapest had to resolve two main challenges facing any production of this early work by Chekhov.<\/p>\n As the title of Chekhov\u2019s (probably) first play was lost, most of us know it by the name of its central character, Platonov, although philological research suggests that Chekhov might have called itBezattzavshchina<\/i> \/ Fatherlessness<\/i>. This is also the title under which the play was published in 1933, in the first complete works of Chekhov.[5]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Kordonsky and dramaturg \/ translator Annam\u00e1ria Radnai agreed to use this title, as it corresponded with Kordonsky\u2019s idea too: to focus on the fatherless figures, father-son relationships, and missing fathers in the play.<\/p>\n The second dilemma a production faces with this play is that it is at least twice as long as an \u2018average\u2019 play (approximately six hours). Therefore it has to be radically cut. However, once you take away half of a play, what you are left with arguably is a version. Radnai says:<\/p>\n In the case of Platonov<\/i> I think that every playtext is an adaptation. There are other plays such as this, for instance, B\u00fcchner\u2019s Woyzeck<\/i>, that whatever you do with them, it will count as an adaptation. Statistically, the amount of decisions you have to make will reach a critical mass that will simply certify it as an adaptation.<\/strong>[6]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Since the last Hungarian translation of Platonov<\/i> had been made in 1978, it was obvious from the start that the production would also require a new translation. Before translating the whole play, though, the director and the dramaturg edited and cut the text in the Russian original.<\/p>\n Once they agreed on the concept of the play \u2013 the story of a generation without fathers \u2013 this helped them to decide what in the play was important for the mise en sc\u00e8ne, what to focus on, what to leave out: \u2018<\/i>If we thought that two father-son relationships were very similar in the play, we only needed to make a decision which one to drop. The aim was to show prototypical problems,\u2019[7]<\/sup><\/a> notes Radnai.<\/p>\n They also made up one rule to shape the play: \u2018to have only twelve characters, just as in the other great Chekhov plays.\u2019[8]<\/sup><\/a> This restriction was an entirely \u2018arbitrary\u2019 artistic decision. As the production was made in a theatre that has a permanent ensemble, they could have had as many actors as they wanted to work with.<\/p>\n Sticking to this new rule, Kordonsky and Radnai removed all the servants and maids from the play, and their functions (delivering a letter, for instance) were given to other characters who were neutral in the given scene. They also decided to leave out Osip, the thief: just as with the servants, his dramaturgical purpose (to beat up Platonov) could be performed by another character with more reason to do so.<\/p>\n When working on the script, Kordonsky and Radnai decided to treat this play as they would a work of a less experienced playwright, and develop (or \u2018correct\u2019) the young Chekhov\u2019s work in the light of his mature plays. \u2018I knew exactly how I wanted to cut the play,\u2019 recalled Kordonsky later in an interview, \u2018towards the mature, great Chekhov plays. I tried to take away everything that belongs to an earlier, say, romanticist tradition.\u2019[9]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The decision to subject this early Chekhov play to \u2018new drama development\u2019 did not stop at a textual level, but concerned its structure and the whole mise en sc\u00e8ne. Radnai explains:<\/p>\n We tried to make this non-polyphonic play as polyphonic as the later, four great Chekhov plays are \u2013 not only in the playtext (the editing and translating) but also in the directing (the acting and scenic solutions). We tried to follow the scheme these mature plays suggest, not only in the number of characters, but also in the dialogue-technique, and the linguistic style.<\/strong>[10]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n <\/i>Rather than focusing on the narrative of the central character, Platonov, Kordonsky aimed instead to juxtapose the various stories of all the characters. In his opinion this is the dramaturgy Chekhov moved towards in his later plays \u2013 and away from having one protagonist.<\/p>\n If you think about it, in one of the greatest Chekhov plays, The Three Sisters<\/i>, we would find it hard to tell who the main character is. There is no one central character in Uncle Vanya<\/i> either. If I\u2019d put it in musical terms, I\u2019d say, from harmony I pushed the play to polyphony.<\/strong>[11]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n <\/i>Kordonsky also changed the usual emotional hierarchy of the play. In his interpretation Platonov\u2019s wife, Sasha, is not stupid but is his better half: she\u2019s wise, energetic, forgiving, and a reliable emotional companion. On the other hand, his lover, Sophie, is neurotic and artificial, and gradually becomes more unbearable with her demanding emotions towards Platonov. Radnai says:<\/p>\n We could be sure that we were not falsifying this play, as we weren\u2019t changing it according to our own concept or taste but in consonance with Chekhov\u2019s mature plays. And his characters across his plays (for instance, the character of the doctor) are very similar. One can tell that they were written by the same author. All we did with this play was tried to lift it to the quality of Chekhov\u2019s later works.<\/strong>[12]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n <\/i>With the translation Radnai\u2019s aim was to create a new, modern, yet timeless text that wouldn\u2019t feel dated or archaic, but neither would be too contemporary or slangy: \u2018My aim was to use words that we can say today as well as they could have said one hundred years ago.\u2019[13]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Once the translation of the edited version was ready, it was still too long, so Kordonsky and Radnai cut it back by some twenty-five pages. They removed the beginnings of scenes, and started them with actors already on stage involved in the dialogue.<\/p>\n The second act of the play is a set of duets: they enter, have their dialogue, exeunt, then another two characters enter, talk, exeunt etc. Here, instead of the repetitions of these duet forms that Yuri found mechanical, we overlapped the end of the scenes with the beginning of the following one.<\/strong>[14]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The dramaturgical work on the play-text continued during the rehearsals:<\/p>\n During rehearsals I often notice alien, false things left in the script with my ears; whereas the actors feel the problems, untruthful situations with their bodies. And these problems might have dramaturgical consequences. We realise that something is not working, something is missing \u2013 maybe we had cut a sentence that was a stepping stone to create the situation, and without that step the situation cannot be realised, as the way leading there is missing. Then we put that missing link back.<\/strong>[15]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Radnai thinks the key to working on a Chekhov play is to analyse it thoroughly, to look beyond the inadequate answers, the unfinished sentences, and the responses of those characters who find it impossible to express themselves (for example, when instead of an answer they reply with a song).<\/p>\n During the rehearsals Kordonsky asked the same from his actors: to look beyond the text and express the hidden feelings that provoked the sentences instead of playing them as \u2018I\u2019m not saying what I really mean.\u2019 This resulted in a livelier, more dynamic performance.<\/p>\n This dynamism, this speed, the restlessness of the characters was also helped by the way the production exploited the humour in the play. It also emphasised the physical and emotional intoxication of the characters, the chaos they live in and the absolute hopelessness of their situation.<\/p>\n The set furthered this aim of gently freeing the Chekhov play from its period and showing how contemporary his observations are regarding the confused emotional state we are in. The set (designed by Cs\u00f6rsz Khell) served the fast scene-changing by being multifunctional, non-naturalistic, balancing somewhere between a real and a metaphorical space. The costumes (designed by Anni F\u00fcz\u00e9r) were contemporised slightly but without placing the production in a past or a current period.<\/p>\n Radnai admits that their concept (showing the father\u2013son relationships) worked to a lesser extent after the end of the first act. Maybe that was what the young Chekhov originally set out to write about (one can find Turgenev\u2019s and Goncharov\u2019s influence in the play), however, the team discovered that this concept cannot be maintained till the end of the play, as \u2018the Platonov story annexes this aim.\u2019[16]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Kordonsky emphasises that the mise en sc\u00e8ne was born during the creative process:<\/p>\n As far as the production is concerned, it wasn\u2019t pre-cooked in my head beforehand, at all. I don\u2019t have visions \u2013 I\u2019m interested in intuitions. Sometimes moments occurred when I saw something I could never have expected, something that made me surprised. These were my happiest moments.<\/strong>[17]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n <\/i>Kordonsky\u2019s mise en sc\u00e8ne (and the dramaturgy of the production), however, gave a unique answer to the challenges the text presented him with: what do you do if you have an overwritten early play that yet somehow contains in embryonic form the big themes and characters of the later, great plays of the author?<\/p>\n Rewrite the play from the knowledge of the author\u2019s later plays; make sure you balance and juxtapose the central story with the multiple stories of the different characters. The result is exciting polyphony.<\/p>\n Berlin Alexanderplatz \u2013 <\/i>Schaub\u00fchne, Berlin<\/strong>[18]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Maja Zade, dramaturg at the Schaub\u00fchne, explains how Brecht\u2019s legacy in Germany is to regard the development of the mise en sc\u00e8ne as a collaborative process: Although strong reinterpretations of classics has been a trademark since Thomas Ostermeier has been running the theatre, as a general artistic policy the Schaub\u00fchne has avoided adaptations of non-theatre texts. However, there are some exceptions to this rule, such as the production of Berlin Alexanderplatz<\/i>.<\/p>\n As the theatre employs four dramaturgs who are intensely part of the work in the rehearsal room and help curate a season, there was nothing unusual about the fact that the idea to commission director Volker L\u00f6sch came from Zade. L\u00f6sch is described as a \u2018determinedly political<\/p>\n director,\u2019[20]<\/sup><\/a> who is \u2018plugging his productions firmly into reality.\u2019[21]<\/sup><\/a> His trademark is \u2018the use of citizens\u2019 choruses, amateurs who articulate their political views, their fears, their concerns and their experiences of life on the stage.\u2019[22]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Zade had seen L\u00f6sch\u2019s previous works, and she was struck by the unique form of his performances, and how much the mise en sc\u00e8ne was influenced by the locus and the community where the production was created. Zade recalls an interview in which L\u00f6sch admitted that by spending most of his time in the theatre he was losing touch with the reality he was supposed to make theatre about; therefore he decided to take the reality into the theatre. \u2018What he does is, he puts people on stage who are invisible for the society,\u2019[23]<\/sup><\/a> notes Zade. What also impressed her was the way L\u00f6sch experimented with the use of chorus on the contemporary stage.<\/p>\n For instance, his production of Medea<\/i> \u2013 a project based on Euripides,<\/i> in the Staatstheater Stuttgart in 2007, was set in a German community where the protagonist was portrayed as a Turkish immigrant living in contemporary German society, and the chorus was played by a group of immigrants recruited from the local community. Relocating the drama, and finding corresponding conflicts in contemporary German society, made the performance of this classic tragedy a poignant warning about the existing traumas in intercultural societies.<\/p>\n Zade persuaded Ostermeier to invite L\u00f6sch to the Schaub\u00fchne and give him an opportunity to direct in Berlin. L\u00f6sch suggested Berlin Alexanderplatz <\/i>as a \u2018local\u2019 story for the city, and a work he had always wanted to stage.<\/i><\/p>\n The novel is set during the time of the Weimar Republic in Berlin and is concerned with the struggles of a small-time criminal, Franz Biberkopf, trying to live a reformed life after being released from prison: finding it impossible, he sinks back into the underworld. According to L\u00f6sch\u2019s decision, the chorus would be the people of Berlin, played by offenders, and the production would include their own stories of struggling today at the bottom of society. L\u00f6sch brought his dramaturg and long-term collaborator, Beate Seidel to work with Zade, and with this the work of creating the playtext with the two dramaturgs began.<\/p>\n First L\u00f6sch, Seidel and Zade read the novel and decided which parts of it they wanted to use in the production. Then they split up: Seidel and L\u00f6sch went back to Stuttgart, and from this selection of scenes created a draft playtext to serve as the starting point for the beginning of the rehearsals. The novel was very theatrical; it lent itself to adaptation easily. Once the draft-adaptation was ready, they consulted with Zade, and adjusted it, including her suggestions.<\/p>\n While director and one dramaturg were creating an adaptation of the novel for the stage, Zade went to local prisons, contacted probation officers and visited homeless shelters to recruit the chorus. The idea was to find twenty people whose presence would fill the performance space, and their own stories would be woven into the play-text. The conditions for being involved in the production included the proviso that they had to be willing to share their stories with the theatre.<\/p>\n The agreement between the chorus members and the theatre was that it was entirely up to them which stories they chose to contribute to the performance. These stories could then be given to any of the chorus members in the performance to recite \u2013 in this way protecting the offenders\u2019 anonymity. They also had a right to veto during the creative process. \u2018A lot of them felt ashamed to talk about these things,\u2019[24]<\/sup><\/a> notes Zade. Their engagement in the show meant that these ex-offenders and offenders from open prisons had to keep to an uncompromising (albeit longer than usual) rehearsal period; not turning up at work was strictly sanctioned. (The performer would be expelled from the production.) Yet they received lots of support from the theatre \u2013 there was even a staff member allocated from the theatre to look after the chorus. \u2018You had to invest a lot of your time, because these people gave you a lot. Sometimes we went to social services with them or to employment,\u2019[25]<\/sup><\/a> recalls Zade.<\/p>\n Later, on the publicity material, it was advertised that the show was created by L\u00f6sch and the ensemble \u2013 \u2018because it\u2019s their text, and it was a completely collaborative process, although the final decisions, obviously, were made by L\u00f6sch,\u2019[26]<\/sup><\/a> explains Zade. The program also stated that it was a \u2018free adaptation\u2019 of the original novel. All the above mentioned ethical considerations were part of the production process.<\/p>\n Once the chorus members had been found, they were all interviewed, and the interviews were transcribed. The director and his two dramaturgs then read all these interviews, and decided, which excerpts from these verbatim texts (like contemporary testimonies \u2018from present day Biberkopfs\u2019[27]<\/sup><\/a>) would be used in the production, and where and how they would be woven into the play-text and the performance. This dramaturgy was very similar to the structuring stage of the devising process, whereby all the scenes that have been generated in the rehearsal room eventually have to find their place in the performance.<\/p>\n The dramaturgical work mirrored the collage technique employed by the original novel. \u2018That\u2019s why we felt we remained true to the original,\u2019[28]<\/sup><\/a> notes Zade.<\/p>\n \u2018I found Volker a really interesting director. He really works together with his creative team, nd it is a collective work. After every run we all sat there and talked about it, and everybody was involved in these conversations,\u2019[29]<\/sup><\/a> recalls Zade. The director\u2019s questions during the process included: \u2018What story do we want to tell? What do we want to say to this end? Are we really challenging people? What are we saying about society?\u2019[30]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n As the rehearsals went on, the chosen excerpts from the prisoners\u2019 stories eventually found their places in the performance, and the show grew gradually. There was one of the dramaturgs present every day, \u2018as we were working on the version every single day and we had to make decisions every single day.\u2019[31]<\/sup><\/a>Zade also learnt that with shaping the text in the rehearsal room, they had to make decisions very early on, as the chorus members, unlike professional actors, were not accustomed to learning new lines last minute.<\/p>\n Obviously, the choice of the performers (people with no previous acting experience) had influenced the style of the acting. It was very different from the style of using subtle psychological motivations Zade was used to at the Schaub\u00fchne. This roughness and rawness coming from the acting became an important ingredient of the mise en sc\u00e8ne.<\/p>\n Apart from the structural similarity, there was a strong political motivation behind involving these offenders\u2019 confessions in the performance: they not only mirrored or juxtaposed the original novel\u2019s plot and dramaturgy, but also offered a stark reminder that the problems portrayed in the novel are still present in contemporary German society.<\/p>\n This also served as a surprise element for the mainly middle class audience of the Schaub\u00fchne: to share a space with the underclass, that segment of the society, one normally avoids or ignores, and confront them live. The plan was even to plant some of the chorus members in the audience. This was a risk \u2013 as the company had no idea how the audience would react. Zade recalls:<\/p>\n I found it very powerful to give these people a platform and bring them into the conscience of the middle class, mainstream society. Although it\u2019s a kind of documentary theatre on some level, on the other hand it is presented through the artful form of a well-trained chorus. But because it is like a Greek chorus, you feel like the society is standing there, a mass of people speaking directly to you, so you feel you needed to listen to it, you can\u2019t ignore it.<\/strong>[32]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Zade considers the work they created to be an adaptation because the genre has been changed and they were adding new text to the original:<\/p>\n I generally find that an adaptation often works when you do something to it that\u2019s not in the original material (film or novel), so you bring something else to it. That\u2019s the justification that you moved it from the form and created a new piece.<\/strong>[33]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n After the premiere, from time to time Zade sat in to watch the performance during its run. \u2018As a dramaturg it is part of my job to check on the show. It is important to see how the audience responds, and to hear what they say after the performance.\u2019[34]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The Changeling<\/i> \u2013 Young Vic, London<\/strong>[35]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n <\/i>The production of The <\/i>Changeling<\/i>, <\/i>by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, for the Young Vic Theatre in London was the first time British director Joe Hill-Gibbins and dramaturg Zo\u00eb Svendsen had worked together on a full piece. Prior to this they had tested their collaboration in a workshop with the Royal Shakespeare Company, exploring the mise en sc\u00e8ne for Measure for Measure. <\/i>Svendsen recalls:<\/p>\n Joe wanted to foster a conversation about concept and how to bring the ideas generated by the play to the stage. Thinking about the play as material you generate the performance from \u2013 this was the impetus for us starting to work together.<\/strong>[36]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n From the outset both Hill-Gibbins and Svendsen agreed that they didn\u2019t want to create a historically focused production of The Changeling<\/i>, nor do a show grounded in realistic-naturalistic conventions. Instead, they were interested in how to exploit this powerful Jacobean play\u2019s theatricality, \u2018trying to realise the play as fully as possible on its own terms.\u2019[37]<\/sup><\/a> As Hill-Gibbins noted in an interview: \u2018We don\u2019t disguise the fact that we\u2019re in the theatre; we use the mechanism of theatre explicitly to tell the story, that\u2019s something I like to do \u2013 but it also comes from Middleton.\u2019[38]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Svendsen thought similarly about the purpose of their working process:<\/p>\n Indeed, when working on a classic play, I feel that\u2019s at the very heart of my role: not to take anything for granted. Instead, with the director, we think everything through \u2013 ask ourselves why the text is shaped in that way, to try to make sure we\u2019ve acquired the fullest understanding of it. And then we let our imagination run riot, provoked by the rigour of really trying to \u2018get\u2019 what\u2019s going on.<\/strong>[39]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n From the above quotes it is apparent that their methodology falls within the framework of the \u2018Regietheater.\u2019 Their challenge therefore was how to make meaningful theatre, appreciating the particular Anglo-Saxon cultural system they were working in, yet trying to get inside the text in a different way. Svendsen adds: \u2018The idea was to fashion the components of the rehearsal process from the form of the play itself.\u2019[40]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n According to Svendsen, her role as a production dramaturg therefore was twofold. One was \u2018to think fundamentally about the relationship between text, the production concept, and process,\u2019[41]<\/sup><\/a> and the other was how to \u2018shift these relationships\u2019[42]<\/sup><\/a> in a way that would be achievable by actors who were trained in the UK, without dislocating them from their socio-cultural embedding where they felt they could work with confidence.<\/p>\n Svendsen and Hill-Gibbins\u2019s starting point therefore was to find a common language with the actors, through which they could begin to build up the mise en sc\u00e8ne together. They found that certain elements of the Stanislavsky method \u2018that dealt with intention and change\u2019[43]<\/sup><\/a> (that British actors seemed to be familiar with) could work as a common ground from which they could begin their journey, utilising it as a tool for the non-naturalistic staging they set out to achieve. Another entry point they found for the rehearsals was the British hands-on approach: that actors are familiar with and confident in discovering more about the play via exercises in the rehearsal room.<\/p>\n Their work began, months before they set foot in the rehearsal room, with \u2018an extensive long-term conversation\u2019[44]<\/sup><\/a> between director and dramaturg. During this conversation they were \u2018pooling ideas\u2019[45]<\/sup><\/a> from various sources, as well as talking about space, relationships between characters, imagining them in realistic and non-realistic space, and sharing their<\/p>\n personal responses to the drama. They established their reading of the play \u2018as a complex riff on a psychological war between sexual control and surrender,\u2019[46]<\/sup><\/a> and began thinking of various approaches to the play. However, they were not creating a rigid, pre-built concept in advance, only preparing the \u2018foundations\u2019 for the rehearsals.<\/p>\n Svendsen often uses the word \u2018conception\u2019 instead of concept, to express that this is a germ from which the performance grows through the contributions of all the people involved in the creative process:<\/p>\n It is a problem if you think about the concept as a scaffold that gets imposed on a play, or something that locks everything down. I think about it rather as conception: you conceive it, and it is something that you nurture. And you are trying to find out what it is at the heart of the play that concerns you.<\/strong>[47]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Talking about a concept(ion) does not necessarily involve thinking that once some sort of \u2018meaning\u2019 has been found, the rehearsals will then ensure that only this meaning is \u2018expressed\u2019 through the acting and other performative components of the show. The concept(ion) is rather the \u2018stem cell\u2019 of a performance from which the whole body of the performance gradually grows and develops, a living, malleable, organic entity that is itself forming as the work progresses.<\/p>\n This concept(ion) can also be imagined as the matrix from which the experience and the meaning of the performance will \u2018emerge\u2019 for the spectator (to refer to Erika Fischer-Lichte\u2019s term[48]<\/sup><\/a>).[49]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The discussions between director and dramaturg about the play led them to discover the dramaturgy ofThe Changeling<\/i>: it was driven by the desire of the various characters. This understanding gave them an idea of how to work with the actors:<\/p>\n Once we realised this inherent structure, it was a real gift, as it can be translated into practical questions that can help the actors\u2019 work during rehearsals: \u2018What do I want to do?,\u2019 \u2018What do I need?\u2019 and also \u2018What is it doing to us as audiences?\u2019<\/strong>[50]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n From then on Svendsen and Hill-Gibbins\u2019s pre-rehearsal discussions were directed towards how to generate a vocabulary for the mise en sc\u00e8ne that would enable them to make those desires active through the acting, yet avoiding an overarching psychological logic for every character\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n These conversations fed into the director\u2019s conversation with his long-term collaborator, designer Ultz \u2013 with whom they were developing the design in a similarly organic way.<\/p>\n Prior to the rehearsals, they planned a two-week workshop as embedded research (using four actors and six young directors from the Young Vic Directors Program), during which they wanted not only to test their structural findings but also to discover more about the space this play would inhabit.<\/p>\n The added benefit of these workshops was that they were held in the show\u2019s actual performance space (the Young Vic\u2019s Maria studio theatre). This enabled them to experiment site-specifically, and test their ideas against the possibilities the space could offer to them.<\/p>\n \u2018I think a lot about space and spatial relations \u2013 how they generate atmosphere and also inflect psychology. For me dramaturgy is about temporal and spatial structures and how they intersect,\u2019[51]<\/sup><\/a> notes Svendsen.<\/p>\n Ultz visited these workshops, and his design benefited from watching the research and development work. His design took influence from the breeze blocks that the Young Vic is built from, and from the architecture of the theatres of the time when the play was written (early seventeenth century). From this a design emerged, where the audience was wrapped around the stage. But the experience of watching was heightened, \u2018to frame the view of the play,\u2019[52]<\/sup><\/a> by sitting the audience behind netting.<\/p>\n During the workshop Hill-Gibbins and Svendsen enabled the actors to build their own spaces and inhabit them; mapped several scenes according to the actors\u2019 moves, and brought in a variety of objects to use them as props for the exercises. They observed how the play influenced the actors physically and spatially, which props were used \u2013 and all these findings helped to form and firm their ideas about the mise en sc\u00e8ne.<\/p>\n Their main focus was, however, on the \u2018play\u2019s potentially problematic structure, the perceived disconnect between its main-plot and the scenes set in the madhouse.\u2019[53]<\/sup><\/a> The workshops allowed them to discover how \u2018similar the two plots are, on a deep structural level.\u2019[54]<\/sup><\/a> This led them to treat the two plots as equally important, and emphasise the similarity of these two worlds through the mise en sc\u00e8ne. This recognition guided them later when editing and cutting the playtext, and rearranging or amalgamating some of the scenes.<\/p>\n The actors responded to this kind of work well: \u2018to take the text as a tool.\u2019[55]<\/sup><\/a> Indeed, the workshops led them to find a solution to one particularly problematic, fragmented act (Act 4), \u2018the wedding night,\u2019 where \u2018there is no centre to the act, because the central ritual is happening elsewhere \u2013 everyone\u2019s sneaking off and doing things they shouldn\u2019t be doing, a series of secret meetings.\u2019[56]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Another important discovery during the workshops was to realise that the play wasn\u2019t written from the viewpoint of one character or an \u2018empirical reality.\u2019[57]<\/sup><\/a> There were several strong characters operating within the play, but nobody\u2019s view was prioritised, no ground of truth was established, rather than the play switched \u2018from lens to lens as those desires were established.\u2019[58]<\/sup><\/a> This recognition informed the mise en sc\u00e8ne in the sense that the space was overlaid with places of simultaneous realities.<\/p>\n The workshops also provided a highly theatrical yet very sensual solution to the question of how to present this play that is \u2018full of sexuality rolling out of control.\u2019[59]<\/sup><\/a> The team discovered the food parallels in the text, twinning \u2018hunger with pleasure.\u2019[60]<\/sup><\/a> This provided them with an opportunity to experiment with food on the stage (creating a mess with food, smearing food on the characters\u2019 bodies etc.) \u2013 thus creating an explicit, yet artful form of presenting the sexuality apparent in the play. Svendsen calls this practical preparatory period \u2018a process of recognition and response.\u2019[61]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The month between the research and development workshop and the beginning of the rehearsals were occupied with planning and preparation. The conversations between Svendsen and Hill-Gibbins at this stage were \u2018going back and forth about what this play is doing and what it is about.\u2019[62]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Svendsen did some more research about madness and sexuality in the seventeenth century \u2013 although she cautions against excessive research: \u2018it is only important in relation to what it does for the production.\u2019[63]<\/sup><\/a> In their case it was the similarity she discovered between the way desire makes people behave (contravening social norms etc.) and how mentally ill people in those days were seen to behave. This was fed into the \u2018mirroring\u2019 dramaturgy of the two plots as well as influencing the acting.<\/p>\n The rehearsal period was an \u2018unusually long time to realise the ideas in situ,\u2019[64]<\/sup><\/a> as a sympathetic gesture from the Young Vic, supporting their work. Here they still had time to experiment with different ways of building up the performance\u2019s architecture, adding layer after layer to it.<\/p>\n The work was developed during the rehearsals via exercises rather than discussions (although there was a \u2018dictionary corner\u2019 in the rehearsal room), and as the weeks progressed it gained more and more clarity. However, Hill-Gibbins was conscious not developing a consensus about the meaning of the play, because there were competing subjectivities in the drama with different aims \u2013 for each of them the story was about something else. This decision helped them highlight the misunderstandings within the play, as well as show the simultaneously existing different worlds.<\/p>\n Once the complex spatial and kinaesthetic structure of the performance was in place, Svendsen\u2019s intensive rehearsal room workload lessened to two to three visits a week to watch when the ensemble was running bigger units of the play together. Her role from this moment on was also a \u2018classical\u2019 dramaturgical role, watching run-throughs and giving her feedback on them.<\/p>\n Once the play premiered, it proved to be such a success that the theatre decided to repeat the show in its main space later that year. As the Young Vic is not a repertory theatre, it meant that the production had to be \u2018repurposed and recast,\u2019[65]<\/sup><\/a> re-designed and re-directed. This second production process gave the creative team an opportunity to rethink and re-evaluate their ideas about the play, take apart and re-organise its structure, and make it fit for a larger space, whilst retaining its intensity.<\/p>\n Svendsen later describes, how, when she compared the script they created for the second production with the original playtext, to her surprise she realised that they had gone full circle: \u2018We\u2019d left the original order a long way behind, only for us, unwittingly, to work our way (almost) back to it. But by then the difference was that we really understood what every word was doing.\u2019[66]<\/sup><\/a> The above examples suggest that contemporary production dramaturgy is a complex, open-ended, dynamic process, and is always the result of collaboration.<\/p>\n Yet, in the above examples, the three \u2018historical\u2019 layers of the theory and experience of production dramaturgy developed throughout the history of theatre and performance, can all be observed.<\/p>\n From the modern era (the Meininger Ensemble, the early Moscow Art Theatre) is taken the notion of the production as a coherent whole that is realised through the work of the ensemble. From Brecht\u2019s legacy we can see the notion of dramaturgy as adaptation and collaboration. From new dramaturgy comes the openness towards an emergent form that arises during the creative process.<\/p>\n \u2018One shouldn\u2019t overlook the fact that it\u2019s not the play but the performance that is the real purpose of all one\u2019s efforts,\u2019 wrote Brecht in The Messingkauf Dialogues<\/i>,[67]<\/sup><\/a> and this can sum up the aims of the mise en sc\u00e8ne. Staging a classic is an action of intersemiotic translation that is distilled through the sieve of contemporary interpretation \u2013 it is an unavoidable hermeneutical action that we may even be able to call an adaptation.<\/p>\n The etymology of the word \u2018adaptation\u2019 suggests an intentional interpretational shift: ad \u2013 toward, aptus \u2013 fitting a purpose.[68]<\/sup><\/a> \u2018When we call a work an adaptation, we openly announce its overt relationship to another work or works,\u2019 states Linda Hutcheon.[69]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n When dramaturgy is regarded as adaptation, to widen the original Brechtian definition towards the sense of \u2018cultural re-creation\u2019 and\/or \u2018re-contextualisation,\u2019[70]<\/sup><\/a> this \u2018overt relationship\u2019 carries the opportunity for intertextualism and opens up a dynamic dialogue between the classical playtext and its mise en sc\u00e8ne.<\/p>\n Contemporary mise en sc\u00e8ne is not regarded as a rigid concept through which the play is forced, but an open-minded approach, a framework that demarcates the context within which the makers investigate the play collaboratively and give their response to it here and now. This openness and playfulness are the marks new dramaturgies have left on production dramaturgy and through it on the mise en sc\u00e8ne.<\/p>\n This playful re-interpretation realised through the contemporary mise en sc\u00e8ne, allows us to see the work afresh \u2013 reminding us that these classics were once the daring new dramas of their period.<\/p>\n The consequences of the contemporary production dramaturgical processes for the production dramaturg\u2019s work are that it is a collaborative, synergic, fluid and responsive role, one that develops as theatre-making changes; yet in itself it carries its \u2018historical inheritance,\u2019 renewed, refreshed, adapted, and is always in a flux. Perhaps it is this \u2018constant movement\u2019[71]<\/sup><\/a> (to borrow Van Kerkhoven\u2019s words) that can keep dramaturgy and mise en sc\u00e8ne alive.<\/p>\n Endnotes<\/b><\/p>\n \n<\/a>[1] A detailed argument for this can be found in my forthcoming book, Dramaturgy in the Making. A User\u2019s Guide for Theatre Practitioners<\/i> (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama: London, 2015).
\nGerman directors since Brecht have the ambition to interpret the plays in a new theatrical way. You are experimenting at the rehearsals. And to make those experiments at the rehearsal a real process, you need other people to talk to. These can be the actors as well as the dramaturg.<\/strong>[19]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\nConclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n
\n<\/a>[2] Lion Feuchtwanger on the subject of his adaptation in collaboration with Bertolt Brecht of Edward II<\/i>after Christopher Marlowe. Quoted by Ingham, 2004, p. VII.
\n<\/a>[3] Van Kerkhoven, 1994, pp.18-20.
\n<\/a>[4] Ap<\/i>\u00e1tlanul (Platonov) \/ Fatherlessness (Platonov)<\/i>, by A.P. Chekhov translated by Annam\u00e1ria Radnai, \u00d6rk\u00e9ny Theatre Budapest, 2007. Director: Yuri Kordonsky, dramaturg: Annam\u00e1ria Radnai, set: Cs\u00f6rsz Khell, costume: Anni F\u00fcz\u00e9r, lighting design: Tam\u00e1s B\u00e1nyai, cast including: L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Sz\u00e9les, \u00c9va Kerekes and Kriszta B\u00edr\u00f3.
\n<\/a>[5] On the philology of the Chekhov play I rely on Edit Bogdanov\u2019s notes for the Katona J\u00f3zsef Theatre\u2019s production of Platonov<\/i>. (Katona J\u00f3zsef Sz\u00ednh\u00e1z \u2013 Magyar Telev\u00edzi\u00f3, 1991. DVD, Budapest Film Kft, 2008.)